Reznjun

there was a country song by that name i think. probably wont hear it on the way there. gonna go see my nephew rassle today and tomorrow. i will take in some tourist sites while there too.

i enjoyed that dinner  put on by our casino the other night. the food was great, they served steak and chicken. music was nice, a dj played a mellow mix to listen to while eating. i had a picture taken with my family while we were all dressed up for the occasion. i dont put on a suit often. i visited with people and had a good time. my sons were given an award. they are interns for our casino. it is a program that hires prairie band members who are going to college. they work at our casino in various projects, getting to see the business first hand.

many of the tribal members who went thru the intern program now have good positions at our casino. it was good to see our tribal members having that kind of responsibility. just hope  mob rule dont decide to ”fix” things. we have a professional staff at our casino, which is why we have the best casino around. would hate to see the mob ruin what we have.

our danceground where we have many ceremonies is getting a facelift. a coupla people told me the work is coming along. it is expected to be done in two weeks or so. i think that was a good idea to fix the place up. many people benefit from what goes on there. sad thing is most tribal members dont have anything to do with tradition until they need something. they will make a big deal about the ones that secured the money to fix the place. the ones that keep the culture alive are the ones that really need to be applauded.

my site is getting spammed. some one is sending me lotsa spam.  i had 12 advertising comments today alone. must be using a bot. it is from the same place. i wish they would pay for their own site if they want to advertise. good thing i have control over comments. i just zap them. it is a nuisance to even have to delete or spam the comments.

gonna put on a pot of coffee and watch the economy recover. the stimulus plan is underway. let the chase begin. it may take more than one pot though. i am still leery of our government fixing all the problems. more than likely parts of the plan will work, while other parts may not. something gotta be done. i wonder why someone didnt see all this coming and say ”whoa we gotta slow down”.  we were too busy fighting wars to take care of business at home. now we fighting ourselves. the democrats and republicans cant get along. like that is new. they just cant seem to understand they gotta be on the same side to make this thing work. its like that in our tribe. we so busy fighting each other that we cant see whats coming.

i seen where they are putting a coupla hundred million into indian law enforcement. gotta keep them njuns in line. i wonder if this means we may hire an indian cop now. or we might not even see any of that money.

lets see the post office loses big money and they reward the top guy with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bonuses. congress approve that, even after they were sickened by wall street doing the same thing. our bingo went under and we lost millions trying to expand gaming in another state. does that mean someone is up for a big reward.

i am going to a big dinner tomorrow night. its put on by the casino. my sons are interns so thats my ticket in. thing is i gotta  ‘dress up’. well i guess, if i get a good dinner out of the thing. just hope this country injun dont embarrass any of them skins that wear suits. the one the left is the salad fork right? or is it the right? maybe i will just skip the salad. i will pass on the cocktail hour. this injun dont drink, even though one of the teachers at the local school said indians were drunkards. thats what one of my nieces told me. they cant answer back.

i am heading out to abilene this weekend. my nephew zach is rasslin’ in the regional. last i heard he was 27-6  and ranked 6th in state. there was a story bout him in the county rag. he sign to play football at butler juco, who were national champs the past two years. he will be in a good position to play in D-I after that.  I am pulling for him. i may spend the night in abilene. the meet is two days. they have an indian art store there i want to see. and i want to go see the old cow town. this njun wants a picture with a real cowboy. and they got a kirby house i may eat at.

i got another load of wood today. that may be the last one this year maybe.  i think spring is on us. i have seen that the geese were active the past week or so. or maybe it is  the weather in other parts of the country. they fly west,then east, then south. and i have seen a few skunks on the road. they are the first to start moving around. wont be long now before its time to put in a garden. it will finally be our new year.

today is abraham lincoln’s birthday. except if he were alive today he would have to wait til next monday to celebrate it. then he would have to share the day with george washington. i remembered i had this picture taken i believe in springfield, illinois. it is where abe sat . i dont think it is his hat though. it was put there for turistos to pose with. i was on the retracing of the trail of death. the original trail of death is when they forced about 800 potawatomis on a march to kansas. about 40 died on the way, thus the name. the real tragedy was when they arrived here in kansas. winter was setting in and they had no housing. then over the next decade around 600 of them died. you dont read much about that in history books. you gotta dig for it.

i can still recite most of the gettysburg address. we had to do that for history class long ago. funny how i can still remember it.

i went to a matinee the other day. the place was pretty deserted, about 10 people in the whole theater. went to see slumdog millionaire. that was a good film. kinda got me seeing all that poverty. reminded me of a few trips to mexico when i seen lots of poverty there also. my early days on this rez were spent in poverty too. thing is we didnt know we were poor. it was just life. our people better appreciate what they got. many dont have it like that.

that movie reminded me of when i worked on bridges. we were building a bridge out in the middle of nowhere, kansas. they had this dark guy as an inspector. i told the other guys i was working with ”that is a real indian”. some of the rednecks i worked with asked me how i knew. i said ”cuz he’s from india”. to them all dark folks were the same. some treated us bad, even though we did most of the heavy work for low pay.

i finished a book lately ”angels and demons”. had to read it cuz i seen trailers for the movie that is coming out soon. i like to read the book before seeing the movie. i seen the first one, the da vinci code. i seen some of those places while i was on a trip to europe. wish i had read the book before i went there. it was probably best that i didnt. it would have influenced how i seen the art in the louvre.  or the sistine chapel. didnt need to read conspiracy into great art. art is to be enjoyed. not to read things into it.

still sorting porky hair. gots lots of it to get ready to tie. wont be long before pow wow season is on us. just hope that gas dont continue to go up. i want to hit a few more pow wows this year. kinda laid low the past two seasons because gas was so high. i hope to have a number of roaches done for this season. it is monotonous doing the same thing over and over. i walk as much as i can to take a break. and i am encoding my language into my computor for my sons to study. it helps me to study it while i am doing that. got alot of work ahead of me on that. then gardening season will hit soon too. well it is best to keep busy.

i watched our president’s address last night. gotta admit he is a better communicator than the last one we had, by a long shot. he sounded like he answered each question, even the ones with multiple parts. the last president would get bent out of shape if he didnt like a question and wouldnt answer it.

i like how the president pointed out that he inherited the current problems we are facing. we all did. it wasnt our doing either. now we  have to deal with these problems. i cant get a handle on the urgency though. if the problems are that bad, maybe we shouldnt rush into this. we wont solve them in the first week. current unemployment is like 7.6%.  not at all like during the depression when it was around 25-30%.  kinda sounds like a salespitch. if you buy now we will throw in these ginshu knives free. and a free shamwow to the first 100 callers.

dont know what our vice president was talking about when he said ”we still have a 30% chance” of failing even if we did everything right. a risk we gotta take. there is always a chance for failure in anything. cant let that stop us. i believe this country will pull thru this. wont be overnight though.

indians wont be left out of the stimulus package. there will be around $2.8 billion for tribal infrastructure. some redneck said that amounted to a thousand bucks for every indian man, woman and child. no it wont be a check to each indian, no matter what he insinuated. it will go for schools, health clinics, roads, law enforcement and water projects.  even during hard times there is someone still trying to hate on indians. indians are trying to catch up, not just maintain.

say it aint so a-rod. the highest paid baseball player has kinda admitted using performance enhancing drugs. said he was young, naive and wasn’t even sure of what he took. i think there are other drug problems that we should be concerned with. we demand that athletes be bigger, faster and stronger. they train year round in the quest to be the champions. we demand nothing less. so when someone takes something to gain edge, we say whoa. billions of dollars are bet on the outcome of sporting events. we push athletes to be the best. so we are equally guilty. i wonder why the royals or chiefs dont take steriods if it would make them better. do we care how if we win. we can hang the banners then act indignant later.

i remember when my brothers and i would play baseball for hours in a hayfield. we used hub caps as bases, hay bales for a backstop. played for the love of the game. we past those days. anyone can aspire to be president but most will never be a pro ballplayer. even with steroids.

 i have taken advantage of the warm weather by walking. i walked each day last week for 14 miles. and twice so far this week. it is helping my back and my ribs. they are still sore. like jagger said ”what a drag it is getting old”.

the warm weather has me thinking of my garden. i will have to pull the remaining cornstalks to get ready to till. some tribal program asked me if i wanted my garden plowed last fall. i said yes and was told they would do it. they didnt. good thing i dont depend on someone else, otherwise i would never have a garden. and like biden says even if i do everything right there is a 30% chance i will fail. i take that chance every year. i wont go without a garden, especially now that we have so many foods recalled. i am getting anxious now to garden.

they making a big deal out of  that batman guy for cussing out a guy on the set. alot of people cuss. that dont make it right or wrong. its happens. but the guy is getting judged for it by holier than thou types. he needs to mellow out alot. they should use that in the next batman movie. he can tell the joker ”you’re a nice guy but what are you f&%$g doing joker, i’m gonna kick your f%$k%#g a$&. ”  it would make it more believeable.

that governor was caught cussing on tape too. it was played over and over. he said if he knew people were listening he wouldnt have used that language. yeah and probably wouldnt have tried to sell a senate seat either if he knew people were listening. i like it that he is still maintaining his innocence. he dont have to do all that. just gotta apologize. and things are square.

i cuss alot too. i was an english/journalism major at one time in college. so i should have the vocabulary, i just dont use it. it is more effective sometime just to tell someone to f^%$ off.

i wonder if i let my taxes go for a coupla years would that make me eligible for a cabinet post? doubt it. that one dude said he was sorry and it was just a mistake. a coupla bucks is a mistake. hell he owed over 100 thou. but he apologized. let it go eh?

that olympic swimmer was caught too. with his face buried in a bong. said he was young and made a mistake. wont do it again. all pot smokers say that. they say he shouldnt do that cuz hes a role model or sumthin. hey i used to smoke the stuff too but i couldnt swim faster than everyone else in the world. back off the kid. we got role models. try to emulate jesus, buddha, ghandi, crazy horse or whoever. change begins within.

some old indians called this the breeding month. for animals. and that couples often didnt get along this month. so if you aint getting along, maybe thats why. is that why we got wars all over the globe. but then man hasnt learned how to get along with his fellow man since time began. maybe next month all that will stop.

thats ground hog day in the local native lingo. i think the potawatomi language is a beautiful language. its too bad more people dont understand it. it sounds so good to hear. i had a greeting in potawatomi that i was gonna add to my website but cant seem to get it uploaded. dont know what is wrong with my skillz.  my nephew composed an original song and i did a voice over on it. it really sounds good, sorry i cant get it on here. it displays text identifying it as a greeting but wont play the sound bite. i will continue to try.

i watched the super bowl yesterday. i wasnt really for either team so i got a pool together. any game is more fun to watch if you got a few bucks riding on the outcome. i didnt win the pool. i needed a weird combination of a safety and a touchdown with a missed extra point or something. didnt work out that way. i wasnt disappointed as the cardinal fans.

they make a big deal out of the overpriced commercials. i use them as a chance to grab another piece of chicken. i seen a commercial last week that grabbed my attention. i think it was red bull. it had that running bear song in the back ground. it told the story of ‘brown bear’ and ‘little white dove’. they lived across the canyon from each other and just couldnt connect. i didnt run out and buy a case of red bull but i liked the injun theme. i dont need to be that hyped up.

i went to some of the sites that featured my old website. they still list that old site. i told them i wasnt affiliated with it anymore and asked if they would change the url to my new site. some opportunist glommed on to my old domain name cuz i had lotsa traffic to that site. hope the sites will change that for me. one site allowed me to change it immediately. good deal.

i even went to our tribal website and asked to have my site listed in the links. that was a coupla weeks ago. got no answer. usually though the tribe blocks access to blog sites. thats how you know you made it. heaven forbid if anyone is exposed to an alternative point of view. sure wouldnt want anyone to think. or to question. keep them injuns in line.

we didnt get hit with the winter storms other areas of the country got. i took advantage of the nice days and walked. i logged 22 miles during january. not much but a good start for this year. this week will have some days warm enough to walk in. i walk for my health. more indians should walk or do some kind of exercise. a healthy njun lives longer and draws more per caps.

warm weather allowed me to clean out the chimney. it makes the wood stove more efficient, and keeps it from smoking. i was almost done when i had a slight accident. i slipped and fell onto the chimney housing then hit the roof. it knocked me out of wind. and bruised the hell out of my ribs. luckily i didnt roll off the roof. the pain i feel when i fell when i rise reminds me i just cant do the things i used to. thing is i have to do them. i’m glad i aint a candy ass.

i missed at least 4 or 5 jayhawk games this year. they weren’t  aired on the many channels that i  subscribed to. gotta pay extra for the ones that air those games. thats why we in this economic mess we in. everyone trying to bleed you for every dollar they can get. i have been a loyal fan for years and now i dont get to watch some games. tonites game will be on though. i will check that one out. our team will keep getting better and better.